BBC's Justin Webb: 'I'm the secret son of 70s newsreader Peter Woods | Daily Mail Online If more senior BBC viewers ever thought there was something vaguely familiar about the way Justin Webb presented the news, the reason became clear yesterday. He revealed that he is the secret son of 1970s newsreader Peter Woods. His late mother Gloria Crocombe had an affair with Woods – who at the time was married with two young children – when they were both working for a national newspaper. Like father, like son: 'Star' newsreader Peter Woods (left) and Justin Webb (right) delivering a BBC bulletin Webb, 50, said he had known Woods was his father since he was a child but never had any interest in meeting him. ‘I still think of him as Peter Woods first and my father only after some thought,’ said Webb, formerly the BBC’s Washington correspondent and now a co-presenter of the Today programme on Radio 4. Woods was one of the first ‘star’ newsreaders of the television age. He presented the first news programme in colour, on BBC2, and as his fame grew even appeared on the Morecambe and Wise show.

However he is also renowned for having been taken off air mid-bulletin in 1976, after appearing ‘to have difficulty reading his script’, as the Daily Mail reported at the time. Struggling to make sense of the latest trade figures, he told the viewers merely that they were ‘an awful lot’. The BBC claimed that he had been taking hay fever medication but viewers insisted he was drunk and an apology was screened. Justin said he had known Woods was his father since he was a child but never had any interest in meeting him Webb, who reveals his family secret in Radio Times, says he had not wanted it to come out while his natural parents were alive – Woods died in 1995 and Miss Crocombe in 2006. But he was driven to act when his three young children by wife Sarah began asking him why he did not have a father. He was also aware that his parentage was bound to become public one day.

‘And rather than read about us in a gossip column one morning, or have to respond quickly to something that someone else was writing after trawling Facebook, I decided to write this.’ Woods, a former Daily Mail journalist, had his affair with Miss Crocombe when he was ‘a star reporter’ and she was the news desk secretary at the Daily Mirror. Both were married at the time. The baby born in January 1961 was named on the birth certificate as Justin Oliver Prouse – the surname of his mother’s then husband Dennis. Three years later Gloria married Hugh Webb and Justin took his name. Woods saw his son only once, at the age of six months, but provided financially for him even though in 1960s Britain he was under no obligation to do so. And there was never any animosity from the young Justin. When he was at boarding school in Somerset – less than 50 miles from Woods’s home in Montacute, near Taunton – he would watch his father on TV but feel little connection. ‘I acknowledge this is odd, but there it is,’ he said. ‘When I left university and wanted to join the BBC, I applied for a traineeship.

‘He was by then retired but very much alive, and I can honestly say that I never thought of making contact. I built my career without consciously aping his; without giving him much of a thought. ‘Peter Woods was a presence in my life – and a lack of presence all wrapped up in one. Webb's late mother Gloria Crocombe had an affair with Woods, who at the time was married with two young children, when they were both working for a national newspaper ‘He was one of the great characters of the early days of BBC TV … my career seems paltry compared to his.’ Webb said that during his career in journalism he had often heard Woods’s name mentioned in reverential terms – but never let on that it was his father. He said that during a dinner with former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, the politician ‘waxed lyrical about the fun he’d had with Woods after broadcasts were over.’ Webb – presenter of BBC1’s Breakfast News for several years – said it would have been ‘inconceivable’ to make contact with Woods while his mother was alive. ‘Why?

It’s the same reason Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, gives when you ask him why he doesn’t try to find his mother, who gave him up for adoption when he was young – it’s the fear that those who do care for you will be given the message (even if it’s untrue) that in spite of that care something has always been missing. ‘I do sometimes feel a pang of longing. I think sometimes that it would have been fun to have had a proper dad, less intense and less lonesome. Woods is renowned for having been taken off air mid-bulletin in 1976, after appearing 'to have difficulty reading his script' 'More normal, in the best sense. It has left me fascinated by fatherhood: its possibilities and limitations and joys.’ Webb has been in contact with his half-brother Guy, 53, and half-sister Susan, 55, Woods’s children from his marriage. At his home in Sutton, Surrey, Guy Woods told the Mail: ‘As with anyone who discovers they have got a brother they did not know existed, it was a shock but it is exciting.

‘Whenever you have two families who didn’t know each other it’s a strange process you go through but we welcome it and will go forward from here. ‘In due course we will get to know each other. Our families have met and they have got on.’ Asked how he felt over Webb writing about his parentage, he said: ‘We were aware that he was doing it and that is fine. We are very happy with it, but Justin is the one writing it, it is his story and we would rather it be told in his words. Justin is the one in the public eye and we are a very private family.’ Webb’s maternal grandfather, Leonard Crocombe, was the first editor of Radio Times and his Today colleague John Humphrys worked, as a young reporter, with Woods in the 1970s. ‘When Justin phoned to tell me that Peter Woods was his father, I assumed he was winding me up,’ said Humphrys. ‘Peter and Justin? Father and son? ‘It’s true that the dates worked. Justin is 50, so Peter would have been 30 when he was born. But everything else seemed improbable. ‘Apart from anything else, how can father and son be quite so different?

‘To me Peter was an impossibly grand figure … he did not suffer from false modesty.’ Woods, died aged 64, from cancer. His second wife Esma Woods, 79, still lives at the Montacute home. Justin revealed his father's identity in this week's Radio Times Woods was renowned as a swashbuckling reporter. He parachuted into Suez for the Daily Mirror in 1956 and was in Berlin to see the Wall go up in 1961. He then moved into TV and the BBC before being poached as the first head of ITN’ s New York bureau. He then returned to the UK in the early 1970s to become one of the Corporation’s main newsreaders Speaking to the Daily Mail in 1975, he explained his new found fame. ‘Night after night we are speaking to people directly. ‘They feel they know us quite intimately – even really sensible people – because we are there, in their sitting rooms, talking to them eye-ball to eye-ball. They really do feel that they own us.’ However, as his fame grew, he even appeared on The Morecambe and Wise Show and his private life became more chaotic.

He left his first wife Kathleen – the mother of Guy and Susan - in 1975. Then, Woods – who had always had a boozing habit synonymous with Fleet Street in the 1950s – saw his drinking worsen. Then came the infamous occasion he appeared ‘to have difficulty reading his script,’ as the Daily Mail reported. The BBC claimed that he had been suffering from hay fever but viewers insisted he was drunk and the Corporation were forced to screen an apology. Later that evening, while drinking beer in the BBC Club bar, he explained: ‘You must realise what it’s like being under this sort of pressure.’ Ex-wife Kathleen then gave the Mail a damning verdict on her ex-husband – and the then new genre of celebrity newsreaders. She explained: ‘I got sick of the lonely nights waiting for a husband who, perhaps, wouldn’t be home for days; sick of the promises, the apologies, the leavings and the coming back.

‘I got furious with the lies about a new issue of BBC aftershave every time there was a new perfume on his clothes.' She continued: ‘They (male newsreaders) are held in such respect, such awe by the viewing public that, in the end, they see themselves as others see them. ‘And their wives, the women who loved them along the way, become mere mirrors of the frailty. Symbols of the truth about themselves – a truth they no longer wish to know.’ Today host Justin Webb names his father as Peter Woods - BBC News BBC News Today host Justin Webb names his father as Peter Woods 18 January 2011 Read more about sharing. Close share panel Image caption Webb says he sometimes thinks having a proper father would have been less intense and lonesome BBC presenter Justin Webb has revealed he was the result of an affair between his mother and newsreader Peter Woods. The host of Radio 4's Today programme announced the secret identity of his father in a Radio Times article. Webb, 50, said he had had no contact with his father apart from a brief encounter aged six months and he had "buried" his identity in his mind.

Woods, who died in 1995, was a presenter of the BBC's flagship Nine O'Clock News in the 1970s. He once had to be faded out when he audibly slurred his words during a BBC Two bulletin, while apparently drunk. At the time the BBC put the incident down to the newsreader using medication for "sinus problems". 'Absent father' Woods and Webb's mother, Gloria Crocombe, became close while working together at the Daily Mirror in the late 1950s - he as a star reporter and she as a secretary, until she was sacked for becoming pregnant. They split when Webb was born in 1961 and the presenter believes his mother may have had as much to do with the separation as his father. "I do not believe she was abandoned," he said. "But the plain fact is that, emotionally and physically, he was absent. "He had a life and a family of which I was no part." Webb's mother, who later married, died in 2006.

Webb said he would see his father on TV while growing up but he did "not really make much of a connection" between himself and Woods, who also went on to work for ITN. "I cannot even remember wanting to tell anyone, it was that deeply buried," he said. "Peter Woods was a presence in my life - and a lack of presence all wrapped up in one." Gossip column I think sometimes that it would have been fun to have had a proper dad, less intense and less lonesome Justin Webb Webb, who has been North America editor and host of Breakfast, among other posts, during his BBC career, said he had hoped to take his father's secret identity to his grave but realised it was "naive", adding that his children needed to know who their grandfather was. He said: "Although I'm a relatively obscure BBC person I know the link will be of some perfectly legitimate interest to those who remember my father.

"And rather than read about us in a gossip column one morning, or have to respond quickly to something that someone else was writing after trawling Facebook, I decided to write this." He said he had "never thought of making contact" with his father, even when he had followed in his footsteps and joined the BBC. Although he bears no ill-feeling towards his parents for the paths they chose, he admitted: "I do sometimes feel a pang of longing. "I think sometimes that it would have been fun to have had a proper dad, less intense and less lonesome. More normal, in the best sense. It has left me fascinated by fatherhood: its possibilities and limitations and joys." Learn and talk about Peter Woods (journalist), BBC newsreaders and journalists, People educated at Hull Grammar School, People educated at the Imperial Services College, Royal Horse Guards officers For other people with the same name, see Peter Wood (disambiguation) . Peter Woods in 1969. Peter Holmes Woods (7 November 1930 – 22 March 1995) was a British journalist , reporter and newsreader .

He was regarded as one of the most famous members of the BBC in the Broadcasting network's history. He was the father of BBC broadcaster Justin Webb . Early life and career[ edit ] Born in Romford , Essex , Woods was educated at Hull Grammar School and Imperial Service College , Windsor . He began his career in print journalism, writing for newspapers including the Yorkshire Post , the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror , with a break for military service as a commissioned officer in the Royal Horse Guards . He is best known for his television work with for BBC News on Newsroom initially as a reporter but also as a newsreader from the 1960s until the early 1980s. He was the first newsreader to broadcast in colour on BBC2, in News Room. [1] In 1976, he slurred his words on the late evening news. Viewers phoned in to complain that Woods was drunk, but his difficulties were blamed on medication for sinus problems. [1] Woods was readily seen as an archetypal British newsreader, and was used as such in a number of comedy sketches and films throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

These included Monty Python , There's a Lot of It About , The New Statesman , and Jonnie Turpie's 1987 film Out of Order. He also appeared (again as a newsreader) in an advertising campaign for KP Cheese Dips in the mid-1980s. Along with all the other BBC newsreaders of the time, Woods participated in the 1977 Christmas edition of the Morecambe and Wise Show . They delivered a rendition of the song " There Is Nothing Like a Dame " (from the musical South Pacific ) with Woods getting the deep-voiced last line and using his trademark seriousness to comic effect. From the mid-1980s up until his death, Woods narrated the "Railscene" videos, a series of videos about Britain's railways. He also narrated a set of five Castle Vision productions about the steam trains of " The Big Four " British railway companies and British Railways . Personal life[ edit ] Woods had two children, Susan (born c. 1955) and Guy (c. 1957) [2] with his first wife Kathleen Marian (née Smith).

The marriage was dissolved in 1975 and in 1977 he married Esma Jean Steer. [2] He died aged 64 on 22 March 1995. [1] In 2011, BBC journalist Justin Webb revealed that Peter Woods was his natural father. Woods had an affair with Webb's mother who was a secretary at the Daily Mirror when Woods was a star reporter. Woods though was already married and Webb's mother was separated from her first husband. [3] Webb commented that the separation may have been as much his mother's doing as his father's, saying "I do not believe she was abandoned." [4] Woods provided financially for Webb and supported his education at Sidcot School , but saw Webb only once, when he was six months old.

[2] Today host Justin Webb reveals he is secret son of BBC newsreader Peter Woods - Mirror Online Today host Justin Webb reveals he is secret son of BBC newsreader Peter Woods A RESPECTED BBC ­newsreader, Peter Woods became a ­household name in the 70s and 80s… Share Get celebs updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email A RESPECTED BBC ­newsreader, Peter Woods became a ­household name in the 70s and 80s… But what millions of viewers never knew was that Woods had a secret son who would end up just as famous – Today Programme host Justin Webb. And now the BBC radio journalist has finally come clean about the dad he kept under wraps. Justin said he “buried” his dad’s identity to the extent that he felt “no connection” to the former Nine O’Clock News presenter. But he regretted being brought up without a proper father. He said: “I do sometimes feel a pang of longing. I think it would have been fun to have had a proper dad, less intense and less lonesome.

More normal, in the best sense.” Woods met Justin’s mum Gloria Crocombe when the pair worked at the Daily Mirror in the late 50s. He was a reporter, she worked as a secretary. Being less socially ­enlightened days, Gloria was then sacked for becoming pregnant. The pair split up when Justin was born in 1961. And, apart from one brief encounter when he was six months old, Woods left his son’s life for good. Justin revealed his secret in an ­interview with Radio Times, out today. He said: “Rather than read about us in a gossip column, I decided to write this.” Justin said he had hoped to keep his dad a secret for ever, but realised he was being “naive”. He wants his children to know who their grandad was and be able to talk to their friends - “several of whose parents are very chatty members of the chattering classes”. Justin told how he watched his father on TV as a child. Today co-host John Humphrys - a former colleague of Woods - said he thought Justin was winding him up when he told him the news.

He added: “Apart from anything else how can father and son be quite so different?” Woods once had to be faded out on the news when he appeared drunk. It was blamed on sinus tablets. He died in 1995 aged 64. Gloria passed away in 2006. Like us on Facebook Most Read Most Recent BBC's Justin Webb reveals his real father was newsreader Peter Woods - Telegraph BBC BBC's Justin Webb reveals his real father was newsreader Peter Woods As a presenter of the Today programme and one of the BBC’s most experienced journalists, Justin Webb is no stranger to breaking news. By John Bingham and Anita Singh 12:01AM GMT 18 Jan 2011 Yet he has never delivered a story quite like this one. After half a century of secrecy, Webb has disclosed that his real father was Peter Woods, the television newsreader who became a household name in the 1960s. Woods was married with two young children when he had an affair with Webb’s mother, Gloria Crocombe. Webb had no contact with his father except for a brief encounter at the age of six months but always knew his true parentage.

Now, after the death of both his parents, he has chosen to reveal the truth. “Many years ago a little boy and his mother watched a BBC newsreader taking part in a show entitled I Have Got A Secret! The newsreader was Peter Woods and the boy was me. The secret revealed in the programme was not me, but it could have been,” he writes in Radio Times. He said he felt no connection with his father because the secret was “so deeply buried” and never attempted to make contact, even when he followed him into journalism. Explaining why he had chosen to make the story public, Webb, 50, said he underwent a change of heart when his own children began asking “why didn’t daddy have a father”. He was also concerned that the news would leak out. “Rather than read about us in a gossip column one morning, or have to respond quickly to something that someone else was writing after trawling Facebook, I decided to write this,” he said. Woods was a US correspondent – the same path his son would take years later – for ITN before joining the BBC as a newsreader.

Related Articles 04 Dec 2012 News reader Peter Woods (left) and Today programme's Justin Webb Credit: RADIO TIMES/BBC He presented the first colour news programme on British television but is also remembered for slurring his words in a BBC Two bulletin in 1976 after visiting the staff bar. The director took him off air and the BBC blamed it on a reaction to hay fever medication. Webb’s mother, Gloria Crocombe, was the daughter of Leonard Crocombe, the first editor of Radio Times. Her marriage to Dennis Prouse floundered and it was while working as a secretary at the Daily Mirror that she began an affair with Woods, then a swashbuckling star reporter. Crocombe was sacked for becoming pregnant and moved to be near her family in Southsea, Hants, before her son’s birth in 1961. She named the baby Justin Oliver Prouse but details of his father were left blank on his birth certificate. Three years later, she married Hugh Webb and the boy adopted his stepfather’s name. Webb described his mother as an “energetic duffel-coated figure who wanted to ban the bomb, stop wars of all kinds and suffering anywhere”.

She died in 2006. Woods retired in 1981 and continued to appear in film and television comedies, including The Morecambe and Wise Show. He died in 1995. At the time of the affair, he was married to Kathleen Smith and had two children. Webb has now established contact with his half-siblings Guy, 53, and Susan 55, who were unaware that they had a half-brother. Webb sought their blessing before publishing his piece. The newsreader with a secret life | Express Yourself | Comment | Daily Express VIDS The newsreader with a secret life WE tell the remarkable story of Peter Woods – as a current BBC star reveals him to be his father. PUBLISHED: 00:00, Wed, Jan 19, 2011 Peter Woods was a hard-living hack of the old school [] The unforgettable highlight of Morecambe and Wise’s 1977 Christmas show was a rendition of There is Nothing Like A Dame from South Pacific. That’s the famous number where a bunch of beefy, sex-starved sailors bemoan the lack of female company in their South Sea island paradise.

In their send-up Eric and Ernie were joined by a cast of BBC newsreaders, weathermen and sportscasters including Michael Aspel, Eddie Waring, Frank Bough and Richard Baker. This is standard Comic Relief fare nowadays but at the time it was gob-smacking to see such apparently straitlaced men prancing around in sailor suits. EXPRESS CASINO: GET A FREE BONUS OF UP TO £150 NOW! And the most memorable moment of all came when the 6ft 5in newsreader Peter Woods delivered the final line, crooning in an impossibly deep, slow bass: “There is absolutely nothing like the frame of a dame.” Of course the joke was that, with his Doomsday voice and bloodhound expression, Woods was as unlike a randy young sailor as it’s possible to be. But we now know that in real life the face of the Nine O’Clock News was more of a connoisseur of ladies’ frames than the unsuspecting viewers ever realised. He had two children by the first of his two wives but it now turns out that he also fathered a secret love-child by a newsroom secretary at the paper where he worked before turning to television.

In a strange echo of his father’s career that child grew up to be the radio and TV current affairs presenter Justin Webb. The revelation has stunned his colleagues. “When Justin phoned to tell me that Peter Woods was his father I assumed that he was winding me up,” writes John Humphrys, Webb’s co-presenter on Radio 4’s Today programme, in this week’s Radio Times. “I first met Justin more than 20 years ago and he knew that I had worked with his father when he was a newsreader at TV Centre. So why did he never so much as mention it? “Now that I’ve read his moving account I understand his reasons of course but I’m still a bit puzzled. Apart from anything else, how can father and son be quite so different? True, Justin ended up working in the same trade as his father but that’s where any similarity ends.” Humphrys says that he first met Woods in the early-Seventies and was deeply in awe of him. “He did nothing to discourage that,” Humphrys adds wryly, noting that, “Peter did not suffer from false modesty.” Like most of the TV newsmen of his generation Woods began his journalistic career working in newspapers.

Born in Romford, Essex, in 1930, he went to school in Hull and wrote for the Yorkshire Post before arriving in Fleet Street. In 1956, during the ill-fated Suez invasion, he persuaded the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment to let him jump into Port Said with them so that he could cover the story for his paper. He only confessed that he had never parachuted before as the plane approached the dropping zone. The sergeant next in line allowed him to go ahead, since training caused as many injuries as the real thing. He stood as much chance as anyone else of reaching the ground unscathed – provided he survived the Egyptian ack-ack guns on the way down. He did survive and was the only journalist in the action. His gutsy act of bravery meant he scooped the rest of his profession and made his name. With that fearless reputation under his belt Woods joined the BBC in 1960 as a reporter. Four years later he was poached by ITN to set up their operation in the United States. Here he secured the first at-length television interview with the exiled Duke of Windsor, who had abdicated as King Edward VIII.

Forty years on his secret son would become the BBC’s chief Washington correspondent. Woods returned to the BBC in 1967 to present Newsroom, the first news programme in colour, and later moved to the main evening news bulletin. With his long face, deep voice and trademark bags under his eyes he became the archetypal newscaster of his era. A hardened journalist of the old school he had the attitudes to go with it. As Humphrys notes: “Peter cut his journalistic teeth in the days when the stereotype was the misogynistic, hard-drinking, expenses-fiddling, risk-taking, devil-may-care, cynical old hack.” Ever true to stereotype he complained publicly about women reading the news – “they clearly don’t know what they are talking about” – and subscribed to the view that the best lunches were liquid. In 1976 he disgraced himself in public when he slurred his words in a news bulletin, which was then cut abruptly short. Viewers phoned in to complain that he was drunk but Woods denied it, blaming the problem on medication for sinus problems.

In reality all his colleagues knew that, after a long drinking session in the heavily subsidised BBC Club, he had been in no fit state to read the news. “Peter just about managed to hold it together until he was required to get into the details of the trade balance,” Humphrys recalls. “The figures proved too much for him. He mumbled something in his mournful way about how ‘awfully big’ the gap was and kept mumbling until the director mercifully took him off the air.” But even if his colleagues knew the sinus story was nonsense there was one key secret about Woods they didn’t know. He met Gloria Crocombe when she was the newsroom secretary on his Fleet Street paper. They became “close”, as Webb puts it, and Gloria became pregnant. She told her bosses immediately and they – with the unenlightened attitudes of the time – sacked her on the spot. Her relationship with Woods seems to have come to an end at the same time, although the details are unclear. “I suspect their split when I was born might have come as much from my mother as from him,” says Webb.

“I do not believe she was abandoned.” He also says that, if Woods did indeed pay maintenance money for some years, it was a “decent” thing to do and one that was not at that stage required of him by law. Gloria eventually met a man she would marry but the marriage was not happy and Justin’s stepfather never became a father figure. The boy had no brothers or sisters but he had a good education and says he has no resentment about his unusual home background. Woods had visited him just once, when he was six months old, and he always knew that the man he saw reading the news on television was his father. But he also knew that Woods had a young family of his own and felt no emotional connection to him. “Families need fathers, we are told,” he says now. “True? For most of my life I would have said not. You need your mum but not much else.” And in his case he had his mother’s “unswerving” love. “At boarding school in the Seventies I used to watch the news and see my father but not really make much of a connection between him and me,” he says. “I acknowledge this is odd but there it is.

My mother had taken a decision to be reticent and children are nothing if not adaptable. “Reticence was for mum and reticence was for me. I cannot even remember wanting to tell anyone, it was that deeply buried.” He has only now decided to speak out at the age of 50 because he wants his own children to know who their grandfather was. “They began to enquire in that penetrating way children have, why didn’t daddy have a father?” he says. “I have always been vague. “But now with my father and mother both dead, and with the blessing of my extended family, I can be open.” Woods already had a son and a daughter by his first wife Kathy when Justin was born. That marriage ended in divorce, he went on to marry a second time and died in 1995 aged 64. Webb’s mother died in 2006. “Only they know what the truth of their relationship was and they are not here to say,” he says. Perhaps the newscaster’s first wife also knew a little of the truth. Speaking shortly after his drunken episode Kathy Woods talked bitterly about her ex-husband in print.

She spoke of lonely nights and broken promises and her verdict on the new male authority figures on the small screen was damning. “Somehow they seem to set themselves apart, so perfect in public, so uncaring at home,” she said. AND YOU THOUGHT THEY JUST READ FROM AN AUTOCUE Jan Leeming The UK’s best known woman newsreader in the Eighties. Twice-divorced, she got entangled in a love quartet with husband Patrick Lunt, Red Arrows pilot Eric Steenson and his wife Robin. Both couples split, Jan married Eric and their exes married each other. That marriage and a fifth ended in divorce. Now 66 she recently made headlines when her picture was seen in an online dating agency’s lonely hearts. Anna Ford She worked for ITV as a researcher before joining the select band of women allowed to read news on national TV. Seen as the most glamorous, Ford, 67, proved she was no pushover when she threw a glass of wine over Jonathan Aitken for his role in sacking her from TV-am in 1981. Kenneth Kendall Now 86 he was a leading BBC newsreader from the Sixties and Eighties.

A teacher who became a Coldstream Guards captain in the Second World War, he was injured on D-Day. He now lives on the Isle of Wight with his male partner and owns an art gallery. Reginald Bosanquet One of the UK’s most popular newsreaders, presenting ITN bulletins in the Seventies with a slurred delivery attributed to his epilepsy. Suspicions it was more about his choice of refreshment were reinforced when he turned up at a degree ceremony late and drunk. He made a huge gaffe when he wished Anna Ford’s mother a happy birthday, unaware that Mrs Ford had died some years earlier. He died aged 51 in 1984. "The News Is He Was My Secret Father" - Evening Chronicle (Newcastle, England), January 18, 2011 | Online Research Library: Questia Read preview Article excerpt RADIO 4's Justin Webb has revealed for the first time he is the secret love child of veteran newsreader Peter Woods. The Today programme host, 50, had no contact with his late father apart from a brief encounter at the age of six months and has kept his identity secret throughout his life.

Woods was a celebrated host of the BBC's Nine O'Clock News and one of the great characters of his day. Famously, one BBC2 bulletin in the 1970s had to be faded out when he was slurring his words. Webb has gone public by writing about him for the first time in Radio Times. Webb said he "buried" his father's identity to the extent he felt little connection and never considered getting in touch, even when he followed in the same career. But he said he decided to go public rather than being forced to respond to the news getting out in other ways. "If Peter Woods had been a private individual, a name and occupation and a few photos would have been enough.

… Subscribe to Questia and enjoy: Full access to this article and over 10 million more from academic journals, magazines, and newspapers Over 83,000 books Access to powerful writing and research tools Article details Newspapers Encyclopedia Subscribe to Questia and enjoy: Full access to this article and over 10 million more from academic journals, magazines, and newspapers Over 83,000 books Access to powerful writing and research tools Article details BBC's Justin Webb and newsreader Peter Woods: The father he never knew | Daily Mail Online comments Shedding light: BBC journalist Justin Webb holds a photograph of former BBC newsreader Peter Woods who he has revealed was his father Many years ago a little boy and his mother watched a BBC newsreader ­taking part in a show entitled I Have Got A Secret! The newsreader was Peter Woods and the boy was me. The secret revealed in the ­programme was not me, but it could have been. I knew that he was my father, that he and my mother, Gloria ­Crocombe, had been close in the late 1950s. After I was born he had visited my mum and me once, when I was six months old.

I think he might also have paid money for some years - a decent, and in those days legally unnecessary, thing to do. I also suspect that their split when I was born might have come as much from my mother as from him: I do not believe she was abandoned. But the plain fact is that, emotionally and physically, he was absent. He had a life and a family of which I was no part. He never had any further contact with my mother or with me. Why am I telling you this? Because I have realised recently that my aim to keep quiet for ever has been naive. I need to be able to let my own young children know who their grandfather was and for them to be able to talk freely among their friends, several of whose parents are very chatty members of the chattering classes. My change of heart began a year or so ago when they started to inquire, in that penetrating way children have, why didn’t Daddy have a father? And if he did, why do we know nothing about him? I have always been vague. So now, with my father and mother both dead, and with the blessing of my extended family, I can be open.

Of course, if Peter Woods had been a private individual, a name and occupation and a few photos would have been enough. But he was not a private individual - he was once famous. So although I’m a relatively obscure BBC person I know that the link will be of some perfectly legitimate interest to those who remember my father. And rather than read about us in a gossip ­column one morning, or have to respond quickly to something that someone else was writing after trawling Facebook, I decided to write this. More... Share this article Share While my mother was alive it would have been inconceivable for me to make contact with Peter Woods. Why? It’s the same reason Michael Gove, the Education ­Secretary, gives when you ask him why he doesn’t try to find his mother, who gave him up for ­adoption when he was young. It’s the fear that those who do care for you will be given the ­message (even if it’s untrue) that in spite of that care something has always been missing. 'Peter Woods was a presence in my life - and a lack of presence all wrapped up in one.

' Mr Gove protects his adoptive parents in that respect and I know exactly why he does it; I would always have protected my mother in the same way. I also respected the decision my father and mother had made and the privacy of his ­relatively young family. I was ­neither destitute nor emotionally crippled - I did not need them and they certainly did not need me. So for decades this secret was ­destined to go to the graves of all those involved. Peter Woods - I still think of him as Peter Woods first and my father only after some thought - died in 1995 and my mother in 2006. Only they know what the truth of their relationship was and they are not here to say. At boarding school in the 1970s I used to watch the news and see him, but not really make much of a connection between him and me. I acknowledge this is odd, but there it is. My mother had taken a decision to be reticent and children are nothing if not adaptable. ­Reticence was for Mum and ­reticence was for me. I cannot even remember wanting to tell anyone, it was that deeply buried.

And when I left university and wanted to join the BBC, I applied for a traineeship. He was by then retired but very much alive, and I can honestly say that I never thought of making contact. I built my career without consciously aping his; without giving him much of a thought. Peter Woods was a presence in my life - and a lack of presence all wrapped up in one. But here we are, publicly linked at last. Though I must say my career seems paltry compared with his. Peter Woods was one of the great characters of the early days of BBC TV. I know this because people have mentioned him to me without knowing anything of the link between us. At dinner with the former Labour leader and European Commissioner Neil Kinnock a few years ago, he waxed lyrical about the fun he’d had with Woods after broadcasts were over. Happier times: A young Justin Webb having fun with his mum in 1971 - emotionally and physically his father, Peter Woods, was absent from his life My father had been a character during his Fleet Street career as well. He was charming and driven. He parachuted into Suez in 1956 for the Daily Mirror.

In 1961, the year of my birth, he was on hand to see the Berlin Wall go up and have East German soldiers point their guns at him. He was swashbuckling and successful. He had been spotted by the BBC, who were keen to bring a little of his drive to the TV news. He certainly managed that and before long was poached by ITN. He was a highly effective reporter in New York and when he came back to Britain in the early 70s it was natural that the BBC would want him in the newly celebrated role of newsreader. Throughout the 70s he was on the screen, discreetly charming, baggy-eyed and lived-in looking, serious yet warm. My mother met Peter Woods when he and she were on the Daily Mirror. He was a star reporter and she was the newsroom secretary, bright and articulate and herself from a ­journalistic family: her father ­Leonard Crocombe was the first editor of Radio Times. 'I do not know for sure whether my mother was abandoned or chose the path she took, and perhaps that helps: simple rejection might be more ­difficult.' Incredibly, when she told the ­Mirror that she was pregnant they sacked her.

I have often thought of her going home on the bus after her last day, alone and without means of support. The bus was the number 11, which still goes from Fleet Street to Fulham. It’s still full of people with hopes and fears and problems, but not one of them has been sacked for being pregnant. To me that is what progress looks like. After I was born she went to live for a time with her mother in the New Forest, eventually meeting a man she would marry. But the ­marriage and the household were not happy ones. My stepfather never became a father figure. I had no brothers and sisters. My life was rescued by my mother’s unswerving love. Her ­passionate desire was for me to understand that the limitations and oddities of my early life needn’t be an impediment to anything. She worked hard, discovered the comfort and stimulus of Quakerism (could anything be further removed from Fleet Street in the late 50s?), and sent me to a Quaker boarding school. So although home was odd, there was the stability of one loving parent and a decent schooling with opportunities to learn and to begin to know that a career in journalism was for me too.

Families need fathers, we are told. True? For most of my life I would have said not. You need your mum, but not much else. Look at me. On the other hand: look at me. Absent father: A young Peter Woods was a favourite in people's homes around the country - but he wasn't in his sons Years ago in America I had a long conversation about fatherhood with the comedian Bill Cosby. He’s ­celebrated by some and despised by others for having drawn ­attention to the fact that many black ­American families do not have fathers, or at least fathers who stick around. The effect of this is much more ­fundamental, he told me, than the ­poverty and distress and ­reduction in life chances that accompany badly broken homes. Cosby claims that a child whose father doesn’t stay is a child living with a permanent and insidious inner sense of worthlessness, or at least reduced worth, stemming from the fact that Dad made a ­decision and the decision was to leave. For Cosby the psychological foundations of self-worth are eaten into - damaged while still being formed - by this simple act of ­rejection.

So my insouciance hid, and hides, an early blow that affects everything about me. Psychobabble? Well, in my case I must say that I feel - in my 51st year - as robust as ever. I do not know for sure whether my mother was abandoned or chose the path she took, and perhaps that helps: simple rejection might be more ­difficult. And though my life has certainly had its ups and downs, whose hasn’t? There are millions of people whose family background is ­unconventional, damaged, lacking. We all make do. And often we look at the model folks in their ­stifling conformity and think: suits you mate, but it would never suit us, too dull by half. Never mind the psycho stuff; if you have some love early on (and perhaps a few books), you have little to ­complain about. And yet for all my genuine lack of a sense of victimhood (and nothing I write here should be taken as an attack on my father or mother for the decisions they took) I do sometimes feel a pang of longing.

It comes when my own son chucks me a battery-operated toy and says: ‘Can you fix that, Dad?’ It’s not that his mum can’t do the job (I think we are all man enough to admit here that she would do it better and faster) but she might already be busy and she might not understand properly the role of the toy in a game that day. The pang comes as well when he picks up a rugby ball and runs the length of the field to score and knows - deep down somewhere - that the pleasure I feel trumps any he has. These pleasures, these connections, eluded me as a child. Indeed, I did not really know of their existence until my children came. I think sometimes that it would have been fun to have had a proper dad, less intense and less lonesome. More normal, in the best sense. It has left me fascinated by fatherhood: its possibilities and limitations and joys. After all, this journalism lark is easy. My father was a stylish writer and I have written the odd piece that bounced off the page. But being a decent father and a rounded, thoughtful human being: now that is a real challenge.

It was tough in 1961 and it’s tough in 2011. I’m grateful to have had a life. And also, truth be told, I’m relieved that next time I meet Neil Kinnock I can respond to any stories he tells about my father, Peter Woods. I'VE WORKED WITH BOTH - AT LEAST JUSTIN DOESN'T READ THE NEWS DRUNK!

Question: Which BBC journalist has been revealed as the secret son of the late Peter Woods?
Answer: JUSTIN WEBB